The motives of the Cardinal have never been quite fathomed. He had done the King good service by clearing the rebels out of the places south of Naples, and out of Naples itself save the castles, and up to this he had acted like a straightforward, honest man; but what was his thought now? "Did he," as the Admiral said so bitterly, "think one house in Naples more to be prized than his Sovereign's honour? Was he now engaged in the act of collusion or treachery, to which every native subject of the King seemed to come sooner or later? Or was he now remembering his office in the Church, and anxious, even to the manifest detriment of the Kingdom, to avert the cruelties which the exasperated Loyalists of Naples would be sure to wreak upon their beaten foes?" It was difficult not to feel sorry for these scoundrels. The worst of them were, like the Prince Caracciolo, of the principal nobility, and they had had to put up with treatment from the French as bad as if they had been their enemies, and not their friends. Men of the highest rank were ordered to the long hours and exposure of the work of common sentries, to save private soldiers in the army of the French. They had also been stripped of their property to keep the French going till they should have time to capture the property of the Loyalists. One thing is certain: that, of the Neapolitan Loyalists, the Cardinal alone was for the carrying out of the arrangements with the rebels which had been interrupted by the arrival of our fleet. What the Admiral urged, that Buonaparte would have considered such a treaty abrogated by the arrival of an overwhelming force, is beyond dispute. It is also beyond dispute that the Cardinal had not a man of his own army with him in this matter. Only he, and the commander of some Russian forces, who was none too anxious to play into the hands of the British, and Captain Foote, who had been cajoled into giving his signature to that of which he did not approve, stood for the treaty. The next morning the Cardinal came on board himself, and was received with proper ceremony and a salute of thirteen guns. The interview, at which Sir William and My Lady were present to interpret, lasted for hours; and I have it from the Journal, which we have found so correct wherever we had the opportunity of testing it by our own private knowledge, that "... the Cardinal and myself have begun our career by a complete difference of opinion. _He_ will send the rebels to Toulon. _I_ say they shall not go." "We came very near high words," writes the Admiral. "I used every argument in my power to convince him that the treaty and armistice was at an end by the arrival of the fleet; and this the Cardinal had come with the determination not to see."